Vancouver, WA

I love sunshine, just as long as I can enjoy it from the shade. That is one of the reasons I enjoy the 26 acre Marine Park, located to the south of SR14 Exit 1, on Columbia Way and SE Marine Park Way. The park has a nice mix of sun and shade, trees and bright green grass, a baseball field, playground, restrooms, and water to a small group of picnic tables, including a covered area. There is also a boat ramp at the far western portion of the park, but it is a fair walk from where we parked the car so we did not visit it.

We hit the playground first for about half an hour before heading east on the wide concrete pathway, part of the Waterfront River Renaissance Trail which is well used by strollers, bikers, dog walkers and lollygaggers like us. We came to a series of signs showing habitats and what species of animal, bird or plant we were looking it. I was amazed at how much space the Himilayan blackberry, which is not native to the area, could cover in the course of a year. Another plant not native to the northwest is the English ivy, which is choking the life out of many of our majestic trees. I had to have a magnificent maple and a tall fir cut down for this reason.

We walked all the way to the bend where there used to be access to the Columbia River, but the walk was off-limits. It didn’t actually say we couldn’t go down to the beach though, so we sought out the shade of a few trees. The river was high and there wasn’t much of a beach, but at least it was a bit cooler.

On the way back, we paid a quick visit to the Water Resources Education Center, though there was not much that kept Layla interested except the machine she could wind up to light up the light bulb, and the seed exhibit which also lit up when we matched the tree/shrub to the seeds. This site deserves an in-depth visit later.

Shortly after this, we found an unusual tree formation slightly off the path. Two trunks had joined to form one tree and one of the trunks grew out of an old stump of another tree. I paid more attention to tree formations after this, looking for other oddities. It was a nice way to spend the afternoon.